Fierce Loyalty Fuels NOLA Digital Rivalry

Two universal characteristics distinguish the true New Orleanian: defiant exceptionalism and ferocious local loyalty. Ask anyone in this battered but rebounding city what makes it special and they’ll answer with a smile: “We do things differently here.” “We’re true to our own” might be the follow up refrain, and these twin mantras extend to the digital front.

Advance Publications-owned NOLA.com, the Web site of the city’s war horse daily The Times-Picayune, holds a commanding lead among local users, followed by perennial TV ratings leader WWL. Both secured seemingly everlasting bona fides with locals for their coverage during the worst of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The Times-Picayune soldiered through in print and Web under the crie de coeur: “We publish come hell and high water.” WWL was the only network affiliate not to go dark during what’s still referred to in this city as “the storm.” People here remember. They continue to reward both outlets with Web loyalty accordingly.

But not all love here is reserved for the battle-tested Katrina veterans. Other network affiliate Web sites are tapping into New Orleanians’ perpetual pursuit of fun. A non-profit investigative site is mining the city’s bottomless post-Katrina need for public integrity and accountability reporting. And a hyperlocal startup in one of the city’s most populous neighborhoods is finding a niche for its civic meeting coverage, especially now that New Orleans’ public school system has been largely decentralized into a series of charter schools.

New Orleans’ population remains somewhat decimated from Katrina with 619,550 households according to media research and consulting firm Borrell Associates. And it is still a relatively poor city with an average household income of $45,348, Borrell said. But that hasn’t hampered digital growth in the city that once aspired to cultivate a “Silicon Bayou” of tech business: Borrell predicts that by 2015, online spending will reach $117.4 million, up 74.7% from 2010.

No one in this market is resting on their laurels to capture their share of this growth. At NOLA.com, James O’Byrne, director of content, said that his site has a number of strategies and resources to keep outrunning those aiming for the target on its back.

“The truth of the matter is that the resources of the Times-Picayune are by far the largest resources dedicated to local news in the market,” O’Byrne said. “The newspaper has more bodies to bring to bear on news stories than any one TV station or alternative newspaper.”

O’Byrne said that in addition to building on a strong foundation of dominating the daily, breaking news segment, aggregating heavily from other news sources and optimizing for search engines is also essential. “And you have to engage your community,” he said. “We’re constantly looking for new ways to make NOLA.com a place where conversations can happen.”

Edging further into the hyperlocal space is one way NOLA.com is gearing up to do that. Without much competition on that front (AOL’s Patch is notably absent), NOLA.com is in the process of reorganizing an extensive network of community news writers and sections already under their employ.

“As we get them up to speed, you’ll see more and more spaces on the site that are much more local and neighborhood-oriented than you’ve seen in the past,” O’Byrne said.

One neighborhood where the company will meet up with some competition is the city’s Uptown area, where UptownMessenger.com editor Robert Morris has been wearing down shoe leather covering crime, community meetings and schools. Uptown Messenger is literally a mom-and-pop operation -- Morris has run the site with his wife and brother since September 2010 -- and so far it seems to have its neighborhood niche all to itself.

“I go to most of the neighborhood association meetings in Uptown New Orleans and I’ve never seen another reporter at any of them,” Morris said. “I don’t feel like I’m competing with them because I don’t see them very often. I just feel like we’re doing very different things.”

Among those things has been coverage of school board meetings. Since the city dismantled most of its failing centralized public school system after Katrina, the new charter schools that have sprung up in their place each operate under their own boards. And Morris is always there with his laptop and camera, uploading in real time with the Cover It Live module he uses for the site.

“We really make covering education in the charter school revolution in our part of the city a high priority,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of gratitude from parents.”

That gratitude hasn’t necessarily turned into high volume traffic, however. Morris estimates about 10,000 visitors a month to the site with occasional spikes for viral oddities like the story he reported on a man whose gold tooth repelled a bullet. “We had traffic from all over the world for weeks,” he said.